How to Grow Mushrooms

Mushrooms are grown for many different purposes, and they're easy to grow in decaying wood, or mulch. Grow mushrooms in rotten wood with instructions from a sustainable gardener in this free video on gardening and plant care. View Video Transcript

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Yolanda Vanveen

Video Transcript

Hi, this is Yolanda Vanveen, and in this segment, we're going to learn all about how to grow mushrooms. Now, mushrooms are grown for many different reasons, and you can grow the psychedelic mushrooms or the types that you can eat. There's so many others: portabella, shiitake, so many good mushrooms that you can eat with your dinner. And they're easy to grow, but there's a simple rules that you should follow. Now, these mushrooms came out of my flowerbed, and in between my flowerbed, I just have mulch. So we...when we took down a tree, we just cut all the branches into little, tiny pieces, and we're using them as a mulch, and mushrooms love it. Mushrooms need decaying wood to grow -- that's number one. So when you buy kits, a lot of times, they'll just give you a part of a rotten stump and they just put the seeds from the mushroom into that stump. You add water, and it grows. And you can...don't have to buy the stumps -- you can do it yourself. If you've got any wood that's rotting or cut up pieces of wood, that is an easy way to grow it. Mushrooms grow naturally all over the Pacific Northwest. We have a very cold climate, but very wet -- almost tropical -- and we're one of the only areas that's almost like a rainforest, but it is in a cold climate. So mushrooms grow very natural here, and right into your lawn. So the key is they need dying vegetation, specifically any type of trees, branches, to grow well. They need a lot of moisture. They never want to dry out. So if you're growing them indoors, too, it helps to give them a terrarium or put plastic bag over the top or a glass or put them in glass with a top or put them into a fish tank or anywhere where they can stay moist. But they don't want to be too warm either because if you get them too hot, they'll die. They need a cold period. So if you just set them outside, too, in the summer, let them grow all summer long. And as long as they're not freezing, they will grow. And my advice, too, is to do your research and make sure that you get the right variety when you are buying your mushroom seeds or you're buying a kit. And never just go out to the woods and collect mushrooms because you really don't know what you're getting, and there's so many different types of mushrooms and many of them are very poisonous. And they might look just like a liberty cap or they might look just like a chanterelle, but in the end, they could be poisonous. So be very careful about consuming any mushrooms without guaranteeing that that is the variety that you intended to purchase. And outside of that, you can't lose with them. Just make sure that they stay moist and never dry out, but never sit right in water. And branches or decaying stumps are the best type of conditions. They don't really like hot, full, dry sun, so if you live in a dry climate, it's very difficult to grow them. If you live in a wet climate, too, in the summertime, they do better in part shade than in the full, hot sun, whereas in the winter, they're fine in the sunny spot. So just put them around in different areas and you can try to grow them yourself. They're very easy to grow. They really don't need you. They just need some water and a dead branch.